Description
Book SynopsisThe next best thing tonothaving a brother (as I do not) is to have
Brothers. Gay Talese Here is a tapestry of stories about the complex and unique relationship that exists between brothers. In this book, some of our finest authors take an unvarnished look at how brothers admire and admonish, revere and revile, connect and compete, love and war with each other. With hearts and minds wide open, and, in some cases, with laugh-out-loud humor, the writers tackle a topic that is as old as the Bible and yet has been, heretofore, overlooked.
Contributors range in age from twenty-four to eighty-four, and their stories from comic to tragic. Brothers examines and explores the experiences of love and loyalty and loss, of altruism and anger, of competition and compassionthe confluence of things that conspire to form the unique nature of what it is to be and to have a brother.
Brother. One of our eternal and quintessential terms of endearment. Tobias Wolf
Table of Contents
Frank Mccourt
foreword xi
Benjamin Cheever and Fred Cheever
civil war 1
David Kaczynski
missing parts 15
David Maraniss
the sensations of jim 31
Phillip Lopate
my brother, life (with apologies to pasternak) 41
Mikal Gilmore
secrets and bones 49
Richard Ford
we were men 59
Ethan Canin
american beauty 65
John Edgar Wideman
doing time 85
Chris Bohjalian
my brother’s a keeper 91
Daniel Menaker
headlock 97
Pete Hamill
a drinking life 113
David Sedaris
you can’t kill the rooster 117
Geoffrey Wolff
heavy lifting 125
Tobias Wolff
a brother’s story 141
Charles D’Ambrosio
documents 149
Jim Shepard
get away from me 157
James Hurst
the scarlet ibis 167
Steven V. Roberts
the roberts boys 173
Dominick Dunne
a death in the family 183
Floyd Skloot
jambon dreams 195
Jay Neugeboren
imagining robert 209
Herbert Gold
king of the cleveland beatniks 221
Gregory Orr
the accident 231
Jerald Walker
sacraments of reconciliation 243
Darin Strauss
chang and eng 251
Nathaniel Rich and Simon Rich
brothers on brotherhood 257
About The Editor And Contributors 263
Acknowledgments 269
Sources And Permissions 271
